Islam and the Terrorist Attacks on Civilians

Imam Bukhari of Lal Qila mosque in New Delhi has said in a recent Friday sermon that he salutes Osama Bin Laden for making the Americans so much fearful. Osama has himself appreciated the terrorist attacks of September 11 and has called it a very good act and a punishment of God to Americans. The messages given by him and his Kuwaiti spokesman have been broadcast all over the world televisions after their first appearance on Al-Jazeerah TV of Qatar. They have also threatened that such attacks through hijackings will continue in future as well.

Muslims youth are proudly wearing T-shirts with Osama images and the Muslims all over the world are demonstrating with the pictures of Osama as a great hero of the Muslims. A British commentator in the Guardian has called him a “Saladin” of 21st century or a rebirth of a “Saladin” after the end of Crusades about one thousand years ago. What is the heroic act of Osama, other than the so-called ‘terrorism’ of September 11. But the Muslim Ummah all over the world is celebrating it as a heroic deed, despite the support of their respective government leaders for the American attacks and the shameful failure of the 57 Muslim states of OIC in Qatar to condemn them against a fellow Muslim country.

As regards the deaths of civilians, which has shocked all Muslims and non-Muslims, it can be interpreted under the light of some related verses of the holy Quran.

In modern democratic governments, civilians are fully responsible for the policies of their governments. They should get reward or punishment for the good or evil policies of their governments. Even in the past history, we find in the holy Quran that God has been punishing the entire nations like, the Aad, the Samud, the Pharoah-follower Egyptians, the nation of Luut, among others. If God sends his wrath for the American civilians, it will be nothing new in history. They have killed more than a million Muslims, Japanese and other non-Muslims all over the world.

Americans also know it very well. The attendance in Churches is said to have increased by 60% after the Sept. 11 events. They are praying to God to save them from His wrath. It is a good response but it should also reflect in their voting behaviour that in future they would not support the candidates supporting war. But alas, they are themselves supporting it in huge numbers. This contradiction of going to Church for their own safety but supporting Bush to bomb innocent civilians in Afghanistan and to carry out his anti-Palestinian and other anti-Muslim policies will not save them from the wrath of God simply by prayers while acting otherwise.

94% American civilians are now supporting bombings and missile attacks on the innocent Afghans, whereas demonstrations are held against them in both Muslim and even in many non-Muslim countries like Germany, Japan, India, to enumerate a few. It is for God to decide and choose to punish or to reward Americans or their opponents for this act of inhuman brutality on the innocent civilians in Afghanistan.

The American civilians are all responsible for the last 50-year anti-Muslim and anti-human policies of their governments. A New York Times columnist, Friedman, tried to defend America after he found that foreign press was analysing it as if America deserved whatever she had received on Sept. 11. Robert Fisk and several other commentators in British newspapers have pointed out that it was American mistake to assume that they will not have to pay the cost for their anti-Muslim policies and for their crimes against humanity.

Islamic Shariah calls for killing the murderer, whether a civilian or a military man. American governments have been the murderers of millions. Who should receive the punishment for these murders, if not the American civilians? Why they should go Scot-free? Should a nation of murderers be allowed to go unpunished in Islamic Law?

In Iran, on the second anniversary of overthrow of the Shah, I have seen posters and banners all over Tehran in which Imam Khomeni and all his followers have been advertising a famous verse of the holy Quran which exhorts Muslims to go on Jihad to rescue the oppressed Muslims in foreign lands. Arab kingdoms were afraid of this export of the Islamic Revolution to their countries. They supported Saddam Hussain to start a war against Iran to save themselves from the Iranian-style Islamic Revolution in their own countries.

There is a verse in Surah Anfal of the holy Quran which says that the punishment of God is not always confined to the actual perpetrators of a crime. It is extended to those ‘civilians’ as well who had remained silent spectators while the sins and crimes were committed before their eyes. They were fully aware of them but did not make any effort to stop or prevent them. American civilians come under this category.

American election campaigns require huge funds. All politicians are in dire need of them through Jewish ources. Therefore, they cannot take any anti-Jewish or pro-Muslim stance in any of their government policies. And the American masses are so much pre-occupied with their own domestic problems that they do not bother whom their governments support or oppose in their foreign policies.

Therefore the American civilians never try to prevent or stop their governments from conducting anti-Muslim policies and killings of the innocents using the latest and most modern weapons of mass killings. Rather they have been jubilantly supporting these policies and acts, as it is clear by 94% support for American attacks on Afghanistan. Just being a ‘civilian’ does not make them ‘innocent’ of all those crimes which their governments have been carrying on for the last 50 years or more, with the overwhelming support of these so-called ‘civilians’.

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